The Intelligence You've Been Trained to Ignore (And How to Get It Back)

We spend years in school learning to think, analyze, reason, and problem-solve, and those are clearly useful skills. But there's another kind of intelligence that never made it onto the curriculum, and most of us have spent our entire lives quietly overriding it.

Your body is constantly reading the world around you and sending you information..

Subtle signals, clear sensations, even warnings that arrive well before the analytical mind catches up. I know you've felt it before, even if you didn't have a name for it. Knowing something was wrong before you could explain why. Sensing that a situation was off before any visible evidence confirmed it. That quiet pull toward or away from something that you talked yourself out of because you couldn't justify it logically.

That's not imagination. That's a real, sophisticated sensing system doing exactly what it was built to do.

The problem isn't that the body stopped communicating. The problem is that we stopped, or, more accurately, were never formally taught how, to listen.

What the Body Is Actually Doing

Modern research on the fascial network has made something very clear that ancient practitioners mapped out centuries ago. In my teachers program, Tian Gan Nei Gong by, Tom Bisio, he talks about the foundational research on fascia and internal martial arts, explains it this way - fascia is largely innervated by proprioceptive nerves. That means proprioception, our ability to sense the position of the body in space and to feel what's happening internally, is primarily a fascial function, not a muscular one.

In other words, your body has a built-in sensing system that is woven into every layer of tissue, every organ, every movement pattern. It is constantly gathering information and sending it upward. The question isn't whether the signal is there. The question is whether anyone is on the receiving end.

Practices like Ba Gua Zhang, Tai Chi, Qi Gong and Nei Gong work directly with this system.

The Qi Gong principle of "The Mind in Motion," as described in Qi Gong: A Functional Path to Health and Longevity, is about using relaxed concentration to re-pattern the nervous system and the musculoskeletal link, and the skills developed in practice carry into daily life.

That's not a side effect. That's the whole point!

What the Tradition Has Always Known

In my teachers other book, A Tooth from the Tiger's Mouth, there's a passage that puts the whole thing in simple terms. Tom writes that we all know how to eat properly, but we've forgotten how to trust our own instincts. We've become separated from our common sense.

He was writing specifically about nutrition, but that observation reaches a lot further than the dinner table. We've outsourced our inner knowing to external validators like experts, metrics, second opinions, and endless research, and in the process, we've let the quieter intelligence go largely unheard. It's not that the instinct disappeared. It's that we stopped giving it any airtime.

What Ba Gua Zhang, Tai Chi, Qi Gong and Nei Gong work on, in a very real and practical way, is the reconnection to what the internal arts calls the Original Mind… the inner knowing that lives outside of analytical thinking.

These practices don't pile more information on top of what you already have. They remove interference so you can hear what was always there.

In the Tian Gan Nei Gong program from Tom, he says the practice asks you to "cultivate an attitude of gently suggesting to yourself where the sensing and observing take place, and then relax the Mind-Intention and let it observe, listen and sense." Not force it. Not manufacture it. Not analyze what comes up. Just allow. That runs completely opposite to how most of us were trained to function, and it is precisely why it works.

The way of the tao is to allow. Not try!

Why This Matters More Now Than Ever

The constant onslaught of information, messaging, noise, and opinion that we all navigate every single day has made this harder than it's ever been. We’re flooded with signals from outside while the signals from inside get buried further and further down.

This is one of the reasons I feel like what we practice is genuinely needed right now, not as a wellness trend or a stress management technique, but as a real skill - the ability to turn attention inward and actually hear something useful.

What This Looks Like in Practice

In class, the reconnection shows up in concrete and sometimes surprising ways. People start noticing things they'd been walking right past. Things like tension that had become so familiar it felt like their natural resting state, breath patterns that were quietly winding them up, signals the body had been sending for years without anyone on the receiving end.

It’s not relegated to just practice, either. Over time, decisions get cleaner, the constant second-guessing starts to soften and people stop overriding what they already sense and start trusting it instead.

That intelligence was never gone, it just needed someone to get quiet enough to hear it.

How to Begin

You don't have to overhaul your life to start reconnecting. A few things that help immediately..

Move with attention, not ambition. Even a short daily Qi Gong practice done with genuine internal focus is worth more than a high-intensity workout where the mind is somewhere else entirely.

Stop asking what it's supposed to feel like. In class, I'll sometimes pause and ask someone, "How does that feel?" and they'll look around for the right answer. There is no right answer. Start with what's actually happening, not what you think should be happening.

Pause before you analyze. The next time you're making a decision, check in with your body first. What's the physical sensation? Contraction or expansion? Ease or resistance? You don't have to act on it blindly, but at least let it speak.

These practices have been cultivating this kind of intelligence in people for generations of people. The body isn't just a vehicle for the mind. It's a sophisticated sensing system in its own right, and most of us have just stopped listening.

If you're ready to start working with it, class is a good place to begin. We meet weekly in New York City. Private 1-on-1 sessions are also available for more personalized attention in person or online.

Come check it out and see for yourself.

Listening to the Body: Embracing Modern Approaches in Ancient Arts

Within the world of Tai Chi, Qi Gong, Nei Gong, and Ba Gua Zhang, there are lots of traditional styles and lineages that exist.

And having trained in authentic Qi Gong, Nei Gong, and Ba Gua Zhang since 2010 and taught professionally since 2016, I understand the importance of maintaining the authenticity of your lineage.

It's from this position of understanding and respect for the traditions that I've sometimes found it cringe-worthy to see people on the internet modify or fuse these arts and market them under their traditional names.

When I’d see someone seemingly just swing their arms around and label it Tai Chi, devoid of any authentic connection, it was hard to stomach.

But hearing a personal experience of a new client recently, led me to having a profound epiphany.

This person, plagued by various physical ailments, got tremendous value from a fairly popular online Tai Chi youtube page.

To me, sure, this account seemed to be 'Tai Chi-ish'.

Their method took Tai Chi movements and made them more accessible to the masses, without delving deep into the principles and alignments of the art, which in my understandting is what makes the internal arts unique.

But with these videos, the focus was less on correct form and internal alignments, and more on simplistic follow-along routines.

Now, even though I might have criticized this before, hearing about its value firsthand changed my perspective.

My client, after following along with these videos for the past few months, felt real relief for a few hours after he’d practice. But then, on a friend's recommendation to switch to a more 'authentic' teacher, he began to experience discomfort and lost that sense of relief.

I told him, "Forget what your friend said. Your body is the most honest critic. Listen to it."

My client's main goal wasn’t about attaining mastery as a martial artist, it’s just to live with more comfort and improve his quality of life. So, while the teachings might not be 100% traditional, what truly matters is the persons intentions, goals, and how they resonate with the practice.

I've come to realize that much of the criticism towards more accessible teaching styles might stem from a place of competition.

As skilled practitioners, especially those from renowned lineages like the one I come from, in my humble opinion, we need to rise above such sentiments.

Embracing different methods will not only enrich our understanding but also help us attract students genuinely meant for our teachings.

With all of that benign said and just to be clear, I do not condone people taking a few classes or workshops and then going out and trying to teach the masses. But when a dedicated practitioner chooses to modify what they’ve learned, I’ve come full circle and can see the value.

Does Your Back Hurt Because You’re Getting Old?

I just had a long talk with my barber about how his back has been hurting for the past few years, and he doesn't know why.

He tells me, "Jonathan," (in an Italian accent, he's from Sicily), "I used to play soccer every week, I used to go to the gym, then during COVID, I gained about 15 lbs, and now I'm in my mid-50s, and at the end of the day, my back is in pain."

He says it's not that bad, but it does hurt.

I said, "Anthony, this ain't rocket science. You used to do all those things, and now you don’t, and now your back hurts. Do you think if maybe you got back to being more active and lost a few pounds, things might start to feel differently?"

In my experience, people love to blame age. Maybe because it's convenient. But if age were the reason, then literally everyone would have the same issues as they got older.

And even if it seems like everyone over 40 that you know is struggling with something physically, it's not everyone.

But staying out of pain is not always convenient, although with practices like Qi Gong, Tai Chi, and Ba Gua, it can be.

It takes a committed effort to start something new. And then to keep it going!

The key is to find something that's enjoyable for you, so at least on those days you REALLY don't want to do it, once you get started it's not so bad.

It's also helpful to find something that can check off several boxes at once. It should be efficient and convenient.

That's why I love the internal arts like Qi Gong and Ba Gua.

I think a few of the main reasons why a lot of my clients love it are: you don't need to go anywhere to practice, you don’t need any equipment, you can knock out your daily session in under 20 min if that's all the time you have, it integrates with the rest of your life so normal activities become opportunities for therapy, it feels good and makes you feel more balanced, aligned, and decompressed, it both energizes me and calms you down, it helps improve physical aptitude, increases agility and sharpens your mental focus to name a few.

It's hard to find another physical therapy approach that even comes close to that. And those aren't even all of the benefits.

If you’re thinking you're getting old and that's the reason you're experiencing orthopedic pain, you're mistaken. I mean, age is a factor, but it's literally the only one you can't control.

There are a plethora of other things you CAN control, and I highly recommend getting started on them so the next 10, 20, 30 years plus of your life aren't riddled with more discomfort.

If you want more information on a movement therapy approach like Qi Gong in New York City, Ba Gua in NYC, or Tai Chi in NYC, or if you're interested in online training, schedule a call to speak with us today.